What is a skinny horse?
When Li'er was little, she had no name. The matchmaker kept calling her "girl" and "dead girl." It wasn't until she was seven, when she could already see a glimpse of her future stunning beauty, that she was given the name "Li'er," still without a surname. The matchmaker said it was pointless for an orphan to have a surname; she would be sold to a wealthy family anyway, so she could just take the family's surname.
It turns out she has a name.
Alyssa Kairos.
Li'er——Alyssa couldn't help but ask Gabriel: "What does this name mean?"
Gabriel: "It means a sacred turning point in destiny. Your name is a legacy. When you grow up and can enter the underground palace of Saint Hobel's Palace and light the meteorite stone there, you will gain the entire legacy of the Zerg Mother. You will also know that the name of each Zerg Mother is a foresight left to the Zerg by the original Zerg Mother's vast spiritual power."
That's why the previous Zerg Queen, Aimia Kairos—whose name means "Power of Blood"—would risk her life to give birth to her, even at the slightest chance of survival. In her dying moments, Aimia told Gabriel, "I am destined to be slaughtered. This child alone is the hope of the Zerg."
If Gabriel had been a little skeptical about this statement before because of Alyssa's weakness, then after feeling Alyssa's mental power, she was already convinced of it.
The Zerg Mother's mental power is also influenced by her own personality. Her Majesty Aimi's mental power is so strong precisely because she possesses absolute rationality, making her seldom disturbed by the frenzied Zerg. Based on the feedback from countless Zerg whose minds Her Majesty has examined, she uses her mental power to help them unravel, rationally analyze, and overcome their deepest fears and anxieties.
The spiritual power of Her Majesty Alyssa is full of endless tolerance, gentleness, and patience; it makes the insect feel as if it has returned to the safest pupae or egg stage, and it can calm down without much thinking.
Look at Seville Knox, a young man who hadn't experienced much! Just a little bit of stray mental energy had coaxed him into a grinning fool!
Gabrielle's heart was filled with ambition. She believed that with proper guidance, Her Majesty Alyssa would definitely become the Zerg Queen who would lead the Zerg's fate!
Before that, they needed to solve the problem of underdeveloped wing sacs of the insect queen, so that she could successfully pass the second pupation and grow into a complete insect queen.
Gabriel said to Alyssa, "Your Majesty, you need a complete physical examination. May I introduce you to your chief medical officer?"
Vio Wright was anxious.
As one of the three main forces of the rescue team, the reason why he was not there when Her Majesty the Insect Queen woke up was because he had to lead the medical team to save Ryan Warlock, who was seriously injured and on the verge of deterioration.
Ryan, after all, was protecting the Zerg Queen, bearing the brunt of the intense winds and radiation from the space-time rift. He was also exposed to the vacuum of space in his original form, his wounds still incomplete. Although Vio had summoned the medical team to transport Ryan to the medical bay as soon as the mobile ship docked with the Pompeii, despite the administration of numerous expensive treatments, there was no sign of improvement. Even visible spines had appeared on Ryan's carapace, a clear sign of deterioration.
If such a powerful giant forked mountain stag beetle degenerates into an interstellar monster, I wonder how many Tiger Armor Guards will be killed before it can subdue him.
Vio suggested to Gabriel that in this situation, perhaps the only option was for Her Majesty the Insect Queen to try to soothe the situation with her mental power to see if the situation could be saved.
Gabriel thought for a long time before saying, "Okay. But first, I need to give Your Majesty a physical examination to see if Your Majesty's body can handle it."
When the complete, hair-accurate physical examination report of the Worm Mother came out, Vio and Gabriel were silent.
The insect was extremely malnourished, with wing sacs malformed. The central nervous system that secreted the insect's hormones was interfered with and inhibited by unknown drug ingredients, and both feet were severely fractured.
"How could...how could this happen...?" Gabriel's six hands were shaking as he held the insect mother's physical examination report, especially the X-rays of her feet.
Compared to X-rays of normal human feet they had retrieved, the foot in that X-ray was only one-third the size of a normal human foot. The forefoot was severely deformed, with the toes bent toward the sole of the foot; the arch of the foot was completely gone, and the ankle joint had an abnormal angle.
Every time Her Majesty Alyssa walked, she stepped on her toes.
Gabriel knew how painful this was without Viocop's help: "I thought... I thought Her Majesty's feet were so small because they still retained the characteristics of the Zerg... but this, this..."
Vio's voice was hoarse, his throat as if honed by sandpaper. "Her mimicry is perfect... she's even evolved a human skeleton. But it's bent like this, so it can only be caused by external forces."
You could hear a pin drop in the Worm Queen's exclusive medical cabin, and only the surging pheromones revealed the turmoil in Vio and Gabriel's hearts at the moment.
The only thing they were thankful for was that Her Majesty Alyssa had returned to her room to watch a documentary about Zerg common sense, otherwise their uncontrollable pheromones would have easily pierced the Zerg Queen's fragile barrier.
Gabriel's intelligent brain communication prompt tone broke the suffocating silence of the insect.
It was Sewell. His pale, humanoid face in the video feed looked unusually grim.
"Master Gabriel, I have found out something and I need to tell you in person."
Seville watched the video footage of rescuing the insect mother, and used his family connections to collect records of human history on the ancient blue planet.
The Knox family, which is rich and has insect veins, now obeys their youngest son who is on the Pompeii. It didn't take much effort to scan, package and transmit a large amount of information to Sevier's intelligent computer.
When Xavier figured out the meaning of "skinny horse", the purpose of the "horse viewing banquet", and what the "Jinxiu Pavilion" was, and told Gabriel and Vio, his violent rage caused almost everything in the medical cabin to be torn to pieces by the mantis's catching legs and the spider's poisonous stingers.
Gabriel stood in the shambles, her chest heaving violently. Her golden mask had long since been crushed by her, and her eyes, which seemed to be oozing blood, looked like those of a demon. "Humans! These shameless cosmic scum! How dare you treat our Lord like this!!!"
Vio's previously scattered compound eyes converged, all their irises focused on the shredded X-ray of a human foot on the ground. His mouthparts creaked as he ground against it. "With such a shameful culture, humans dare to call themselves the founders of interstellar civilization! Such history has long been whitewashed and forgotten!"
As humanity journeyed toward cosmic civilization, the original concept of nation-states on Blue Star ceased to exist. The humans of Blue Star Village began to write their own history, presenting it to the universe. Some of the uncivilized and even brutal records of history were collectively erased by humanity.
Humans pride themselves on being civilized and despise the Zerg's brutality. But never before in the history of the Zerg have they treated their own kind as objects, raising them for their own amusement!
Sewell's fury had already erupted when he first looked up the information, but now all his intense emotions had become embers buried beneath the ash. He was so calm now, as if a separate self had split off, his soul surveying everything from above, even looking down at himself, still able to read the information with a hoarse voice: "Because the powerful and wealthy on Ancient Blue Planet back then preferred fragile things, 'skinny horses,' as a product tailored to cater to their tastes, required strict diets and girths. The waist circumference of the best-quality skinny horses was supposed to be smaller than the circumference of a warhorse's front legs..."
"Because of the aesthetic standards of the time, a woman's swaying gait was considered 'graceful'; therefore, the policy of cultivating 'thin horses' to cater to the market was to 'bind' the feet of young girls, around 4 to 7 years old, when their bones had not yet formed. The method was... to soften the feet with hot water, trim the toenails to an extremely short length, and forcefully bend all four toes except the big toe towards the center of the foot, forcing the toe joints to bend as far as possible. Then..."
"Shut up! Stop talking!" Gabriel raised his hand suddenly, and the poison needle that could not be retracted tore a long gash from Sevier's mouth to his chin.
For about five minutes, the only sound in the entire room was the uncontrolled expansion and contraction of the Zerg's chitinous skin.
Gabriel found a relatively intact bottle of powerful healing agent from the debris on the ground and sprayed it on Seville. The cut healed quickly without leaving even a trace. "I'm sorry, Seville Knox, I... I lost my composure."
She turned to Vio and asked, "Her Majesty Alyssa's foot can be healed, right?"
Vio: "I will sacrifice all my life's knowledge and my family's honor to return Her Majesty Alyssa a pair of healthy feet. But what about the drug in the medical report that appears to suppress Her Majesty Alyssa's central nervous system's secretion of sex hormones?"
Seville: "...some institutions on Ancient Blue Star that train 'skinny horses', in order to prevent these playthings from giving birth to illegitimate children that might undermine the status of legitimate children, will feed these 'skinny horses' with medicine that will affect their fertility from a young age..."
Seville explained to Gabriel and Vio the concept of legitimate and illegitimate children among the humans of the ancient Blue Star. The insects, shocked by the outdated customs of the ancient Blue Star, didn't know how to react.
Zerg reproduction is also incredibly efficient. Males emit courtship pheromones, and females, if willing to respond, emit receptive pheromones. Then, they pair up, breed, and produce offspring. Once a pairing is successful, the pheromones containing sex hormones from both partners are only receivable by the paired individuals, thus ensuring the Zerg's monogamous nature. The Zerg are already baffled by the promiscuous and even open relationships of interstellar humans, but they've never imagined that the humans of Ancient Blue Star go even further, even maintaining extramarital affairs and pursuing sexual pleasure.
Gabriel was no longer able to be angry. Self-blame and regret were like sticky swamp mud, almost drowning her. "It's my fault... I'm too incompetent... It took too long to lobby for Her Majesty Alyssa's rescue mission... Three star years... Let Her Majesty Alyssa stay in the cannibalistic environment of Ancient Blue Star for so long..."
It was such a mess. The death of Her Majesty Emilia had disrupted the entire rhythm of Saint Joseph's Palace.
For centuries, the Zerg military, plagued by increasingly rampant attacks from alien beasts and the ongoing struggle with interstellar humanity, has endured a constant state of intense combat, leaving them mentally unstable. There is only one Zerg Queen, and even though she travels extensively to the front lines to soothe the restless Zerg, her efforts often only lead to more problems. Consequently, the Zerg military developed a placebo called "Primary Honey," which, when consumed, temporarily stabilizes the Zerg's mental state.
With the ability to replace the Zerg Mother's spiritual soothing function with the First Honey, the heavily armed Zerg of the Military Faction gradually became dissatisfied with being merely the vanguard of the Zerg Mother's army. However, His Majesty Amelia's use of the First Honey to combat the Zerg, led the Zerg of the Military Faction to believe that His Majesty Amelia was motivated by maintaining the Zerg Mother's power, but Gabriel knew otherwise.
His Majesty Aimi had once said to her solemnly, "Gabriel, I've used my mental power to probe the Zerg who have used the Primordial Honey. Their spiritual seas are very strange, with undercurrents surging beneath their calm surface. I have a bad feeling. This kind of thing cannot be allowed to circulate freely."
His Majesty Aimiyah made various attempts to mediate, getting the higher-ranking families to make concessions and suppressing and coaxing the military faction, thus achieving a delicate balance between the parties. However, all of this collapsed when His Majesty Aimiyah was suddenly attacked and died prematurely.
The military faction of the Zerg was not enthusiastic about retrieving the Zerg Queen's eggs. Gabriel had to persuade the old-school, high-ranking families to override the military faction and pass the rescue motion.
But now it's too late.
Gabriel dragged his heavy body back to the Zerg Queen's chambers. A tiny, glowing white queen, Alyssa, was learning the Zerg language from the robot, Pineapple.
"Gabriel Sen..."
"It's not 'Sen', it's 'Thorne', Your Majesty."
"Thorne...Thorne..."
"Sol Knox..."
"It's not 'Thor', it's 'Sevier', Your Majesty."
"Sevier..."
The surging waves of love and pity slammed Gabrielle so hard that she was practically like a powerless water strider drifting on the ocean current. Unable to control herself, she made an act that was considered disrespectful and presumptuous, hugging Her Majesty Alyssa tightly.
Alyssa was startled by the sudden embrace, and only relaxed when she saw that it was Gabriel. This kind of intimacy, which Alyssa had never experienced before, made her cheeks hot. She put her little hand between her and Gabriel's body and pushed him away invisibly: "Mammy, what's wrong with you?"
Alyssa felt a cool, wet sensation on her neck. She looked up and found that Gabriel seemed to be crying. Tears flowed from the eyeholes of her new golden mask and dripped onto Alyssa's neck.
"Mammy," Alyssa said, feeling a little uneasy because she had just undergone a comprehensive physical examination not long ago. "Is there something wrong with my body?"
"No, Your Majesty, you are fine. You will be very well with us. I am so happy to finally be reunited with you."
Alyssa was silent for a moment, then raised her hand that was between her and Gabriel's body and took off Gabriel's golden mask.
In Gabriel's shocked and bewildered eyes, she used a handkerchief to wipe away Gabriel's tears, which were muffled by the mask and flowed randomly, and then she put her arms around Gabriel's waist.
Through the clothes and the straps, Alyssa stroked Gabriel's appendages tied to his waist. "Mammy... you don't need to wear a mask or have your hands tied. I'm not afraid of you... or bugs."
She raised her head, her azure eyes curved into two small crescents: "Li'er... Alyssa Kairos is also very happy."
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